22 Ways to Make a Girl Smile
by Chaos Dragon
Summary: He just wants to make her smile.  Summary to be revised.  D/S


22 Ways to Make a Girl Smile

1

_Tell her she's beautiful, not just pretty._

Being a senior, Sam decided, wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Especially when one was already running late to the last class of the day, and was only going to be more so because of the snowballs the underclassmen had decided would make excellent target practice. Funny how Danny and Tucker hadn't been around, and that the kids doing the throwing never aimed for a single member of the A-List. Even more ironic that they'd been the only others out in the snow covered courtyard.

Now she was freezing, and she was wet, and she was definitely going to have detention. There was no way Lancer was going to let it slide, not even if she turned in the idiots who'd targeted her. She didn't even have the heart to blame them at any rate' it was easy to think of it as revenge for the nasty tricks the seniors tended to pull.

She would know. Even if she hadn't been the victim of it herself, she knew two very good friends who had been the victim of every kind of senior related prank that existed.

Sam sighed as she shook the last if the slushy ice from her coat before tugging it back on. The bell rang and she could only sigh again as she trudged along to final period English. The door was closed, even if none of the other doors in the hallway were. Just like Lancer to make it even more obvious if someone was trying to slip in discretely.

"Detention, Ms. Manson," was all Lancer said as she quietly opened the door and slipped in. she could only nod as she started to head for her seat between Tucker and Danny.

There was a snort from her left and Sam looked up just in time to see Dash poke a foot out in the aisle. "Looks like you went swimming, Manson."

She all but bared her teeth at him as she realized he knew exactly why she'd been targeted even when he was one of the biggest bullies in the school. Convenience and the knowledge that Sam Manson wasn't going to pound anyone into the grounds for a little snowball.

"Shove it, Dash," and she stepped over his foot and dropped down next to Danny and Tucker, completely ignoring Danny when he tried to ask her in a hushed voice if she was alright. Poor Tucker; he was the one to ask what happened.

"I fell in a snow bank," she snapped before snatching Tucker's book off of his desk and snapping it shut, then whacking him in the arm with it.

She offered a heated glare to Mr. Lancer when he cleared his throat at her angry action, but he didn't say anything so she only found her own book and settled in for an hour of boredom. She was ahead enough that any questions thrown her way were answered without much effort. Sam spent her time pretending to read ahead and scribbling angry little doodles on the margins of the book.

It had been such a promising year, she thought. They were seniors, finally, and there a semblance of control over the ghost problems. Granted, that was mostly Danny's work, because he'd spent the entire summer and a good portion of their junior year learning the ways of being a 'proper' ghost. In that one area, he was so far ahead of Vlad that it wasn't funny.

Actually, it was, because the last time Vlad showed his face in Amity Park Danny had help from his usual enemies in booting the older hybrid. It turned out that once a ghost claimed a haunt, in Danny's case the entire town, any resident spirits were somehow obligated to help expel violent intruders.

(Naturally there were never any 'resident spirits' whenever Skulker raised his mechanical head.)

But the lack of ghostly activity was supposed to be a good thing. They could all focus on school, having a life, and maybe even a little romance. Before there had been nothing, and now that she had a chance to convince Danny that she was an attractive and attracting person… still nothing.

In theory Sam was alright with it.

She'd been alright with it right up until she'd been hanging out with Danny and Tucker at the mall the night before. She wasn't interested, but when an attractive boy asks you if you're dating anyone, it's flattering.

But when one of your best friends takes his nose out of his PDA to say, "She doesn't date, she's one of the guys," any hope of getting the attention of the boy you're in love with crashes right down around your knees. But it was Danny's halfhearted shrug that had killed it the rest of the way.

She'd spent the entire night dwelling on it, complete with nightmares about having a penis. Her day had already been ruined before she got to school, early and along, and well before some jerks decided to make her a walking slushy.

Even now, when they were supposed to be discussing a modernized version of Romeo and Juliet, she couldn't stand paying attention. An epic romance, and here she was with absolutely nothing. Pining after a boy like – Ugh. She was too pissed off to even come up with an appropriate heroine to compare herself to.

So Sam resigned herself to ignoring Tucker, which was easy, and ignoring Danny, which was much, much harder. He was very nearly the only person that made her feel like a girl.

Not that she ever felt overtly masculine, or even a little bit at all. She was too aware of the fact that she was a girl, complete with girl parts. She just couldn't figure out why her best friends could see her as a girl. She wore skirts, shirts that hugged her chest, and if she wasn't overly endowed, she did have breasts.

Maybe instead of resigning herself to ignoring them, she should resign herself to that fact that neither of her best friends were ever going to see her as anything more than 'one of the guys.'

xXx

The entire day had been off kilter since Danny met Tucker at their usual corner. Sam hadn't been there. In fact, Danny hadn't been able to corner her all day, which was nothing short of miraculous (on her part) since their lockers were next to each other. Her backpack wasn't big enough to let her go from class to class without stopping, and Danny never bothered to carry everything he needed. The last time he'd done that he'd lost an entire night's worth of frantic homework to Cujo, something he was loathe to let happen again just because he wanted to be lazy.

At first Danny thought Sam was running late, but that hope had been crushed when she hadn't come to lunch and he'd realized that she was either having the worst day ever or actively avoiding him. Or Tucker, but since they shared most classes, it was basically the same thing.

Granted, from the look of things, she was having a bad day on top of avoiding him. She was soaked, her backpack was bedraggled, and the scowl on her face looked like someone had used superglue on it.

Danny hoped she would at least talk to him after class was over, but since she was ignoring his attempts to pass her a note he didn't think the odds were very good. For the moment he contented himself with throwing on her lap and turning quickly back to his own book and Mr. Lancer, his face a mask of rapt attention and faux innocence.

He heard the rustle of paper to his left where she sat but was too afraid to glance over and see what she'd done. The odds were much better that she was crumpling it up instead of reading it.

Of course when a scrap of paper dropped over his shoulder his heart sprang into his throat as he automatically assumed it was from Sam. He knew better as he saw that it had been torn off of Tucker's notebook and was a single line of his friend's cramped scrawl.

_What's Sam's deal?_

Danny glanced back with an arched eyebrow and shrugged, tucking the paper into the back of his book so Mr. Lancer wouldn't come by and snatch it up. The man had a disheartening habit of doing it with the most embarrassing notes, and then reading them out loud in an effort to show the offending student the error of their ways.

It had been Danny too many times for him to want to risk being caught with a note again.

He zeroed back in on the page they were supposed to be talking about and promptly let his mind wander. If Lancer at least thought he was paying attention he usually left him alone. He'd learned over the years that he got away with a lot more if he faked it.

The truth was that Danny had no idea what was going on with Sam. They talked all the time, just like he and Tucker did, but Danny had the aching feeling that he missed a lot more than he should because he spent so much time trying to pretend that he didn't like her as much as he did. The fear of her realizing that he spent more time wishing she were kissing him than paying attention to what she said was something he carried everywhere he went.

It had only gotten worse once he'd claimed Amity as his haunt. Sure, he could pay more attention to school and life and less getting his ass handed to him. The down side was that he spent a lot more time facing the fact that Sam was his friend. _Just_ his friend.

Yeah. Just his friend. And he wanted to much more.

She was still the same girl he'd met in kindergarten, though she didn't wear pink frills and lace. (That had gone out the window about the time she hit puberty and realized that she wanted nothing more than to be everything her mother wasn't.) She still dressed the same way she had for years, talked the same way, had the same ideas and opinions. Hell, she'd gotten so proactive that her hair was nearly to her waist so that she could donate it to a wig making charity.

The fact was _he_ was the one that had changed. The friendship had grown to be so much more on his end that Danny was pretty sure if Sam was unhappy, he was unhappy.

He was unhappy.

This was not an acceptable situation.

After twenty minutes of thought Danny wasn't any closer to figuring it out, much to his dismay. He thought that maybe he'd have a better idea if she had talked to him at least once today. Since he didn't have that he wasn't sure what he was left with. She'd been fine when they'd left the mall last night. She hadn't said anything when he'd walked her home.

As Lancer moved on to the next chapter and the bell ticked closer to ringing (and freedom) Danny turned his brain around to try and look at it from another side. It was a trick that had helped him with his ghost issues, and he'd tried applying it to other aspects of his life with varying degrees of success. He'd never actually applied the school of thought to Sam, but like they said, there was a first time for everything.

Attempt number one consisted of trying to figure out if something happened after she got home. Attempt number one failed, since Danny had no way of knowing. But he couldn't come up with anything that could possibly have happened there that would have her so angry to avoid him and Tucker both. No, things at home were usually her mom, and that never ended up with her being pissed at her friends.

Attempt number two moved on to the walk home, which again failed. She'd been quit, and now that he really thought about it, withdrawn. Failure, yes, but for a brief moment Danny felt like he'd made progress.

Attempt number three was interrupted when Mr. Lancer slammed a hand down on the corner of Danny's desk.

"Mr. Fenton!"

Danny bit back a yelp as his head swiveled towards the teacher and he blinked owlishly. He had to bite his tongue against the urge to say, _I didn't do it_. Because any time that came out of his mouth, inevitably the authority figure he'd said it to immediately began interrogating him about what it was he'd done.

"Yes?" he managed to get out without sounding to pitiful.

Mr. Lancer narrowed his eyes. "Would you care to share with the class exactly what you find so fascinating that you're not paying any attention whatsoever?"

Again Danny had to bite his tongue. He really wanted to just say no. he was also really sure that saying that was a straight ticket to detention, providing he didn't pull a trip just based on spacing out.

Instead he went with bullshitting.

"I don't get it," he shot out. And before Lancer could finish opening his mouth Danny plowed right ahead, pleased that for once he'd actually read the assigned book. Play. Whatever.

"Everyone says that it's such a great romance, but I don't see it. You've got a guy that starts out pining for one girl, and then he throws her over for another one." He paused for a second and scratched his cheek. "You can say it's a deathless romance or whatever, but all I see is two kids being stupid. They know each other for a few weeks, get married in secret, and then they wind up dead."

Lancer arched an eyebrow. "They died rather than live without the other, Mr. Fenton. A great many people consider it more of a tragic romance than anything else."

Danny chuckled a little. "That's what I mean. It's so stupid. They killed themselves and they barely knew each other. I think that if they'd lived they probably would have been miserable. They didn't know each other at all."

Lancer hmm'd and Danny shrugged a little. "Fast romances can happen, but real love is based on a lot more than that. I don't think you can call it a tragic romance when they barely knew each other. It's just a tragedy."

"I see your point."

And like that Danny was free, Lancer moving on and letting him go back to his thoughts. For a moment Danny wanted to sigh. His opinions on Romeo and Juliet were all based on personal experience. He'd had crushes, lots of them. Paulina, to his everlasting shame. Valerie, which was probably more of a tragic romance than anything Shakespeare put into this particular play.

Sam. But that wasn't really a crush, because when you knew everything there was to know about someone and loved them because of it, in spite of it… Well, that's deathless romance.

Romeo had nothing on the way he loved Sam.

And in a brief moment of clarity, Danny pulled attempt number four. It was nothing short of an epiphany, but really, how hard was it to remember how Sam had shrunk in on herself at the mall when Tucker called her one of the guys? He should have seen it then, he berated himself. If it wouldn't have drawn attention he would have smacked his head against his desk.

Repeatedly.

With great vigor.

Or maybe he could just smack Tucker.

Or maybe…

Maybe he could just fix it.

xXx

Sam didn't bother with the note Danny tossed her, she dropped it into the trash on her way out of Lancer's room. She needed to make a quick stop at her locker before heading home, and if she was quick she might be able to avoid actually having to interact with her idiot best friends, even if she kind of wanted to congratulate Danny on saving himself from Lancer's wrath. (His argument was nothing she hadn't heard before, but she wasn't going to malign Shakespeare too much regardless of how accurate she thought Danny's assessment was.)

However, a quick getaway was not to be had. Danny was already at his locker. And looking for her.

She thought it spoke of strong moral fortitude that she didn't just turn around and walk away. She knew it spoke more of her desire to not get a zero for skipping homework. However, she did square her shoulders convincingly as she walked right past him and promptly started working her lock.

So when she felt more than saw his presence at her shoulder, she steadfastly ignored it. Until he spoke.

"Hey, Sam?" She didn't answer, but it didn't deter him as he continued to stand there. "You look beautiful today."

For a moment she was frozen, almost literally. Soaked, miserable, and most definitely not beautiful, and he chooses _now_ to say something that made her heart stop?

"Really beautiful," he said softly.

That was the last straw. Sam turned to give him a piece of her mind – and he gave her a crooked smile.

"You always do."

Blue eyes smiled at her as he let himself get absorbed into the crush of high school students escaping, leaving Sam there confused, bemused, and late for detention.

But she was smiling.


End file.
